Microsoft May Allow More Open-Source Apps In Windows Phone Marketplace Later On

A Microsoft spokesperson just confirmed that the company is considering allowing more open-source licensed apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace. The response was in light of inquiries about their most recent Application Provider Agreement which bans a majority of open-source apps licensed under the GNU GPLv 3, GNU Affero General Public License version 3, the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3, and "any equivalents to the foregoing."

Given the popularity and widespread adoption of the Android OS thanks to open-source support, it seems odd that Microsoft isn't trying harder to court the open-source development community. When contacted by ZDNet about this situation, a Microsoft spokesperson responded that the current Application Provider Agreement does allow for certain open-source licenses and that additional open-source licenses may be supported in future revisions of the agreement.

“The Windows Phone Marketplace supports several open source licenses, including BSD, MIT, Apache Software License 2.0, MS-PL and other similar permissive licenses. We revise our Application Provider Agreement from time to time based on customer and developer feedback, and we are exploring the possibility of modifying it to accommodate additional open source-based applications in upcoming revisions,” said the spokesperson.